'And she took the job?'
'Not that I can tell.'
Michaels felt an absurd sense of relief. A job offer, fine, that was
no big deal. Sure, she should have told him about it, but, hey, things
were busy, and maybe she'd planned to brush the director off before she
mentioned it. That would be like her. Nothing to worry about.
Yeah? Then why is your stomach suddenly all twisted and cold?
Anchorage, Alaska
When he used his phone to check his e-mail, Tyrone Howard saw a
priority call from Jay Gridley. Huh. What was that about?
It took forever to scroll the message on the tiny screen, but it was
pretty straightforward. Jay had put out a call to all his contacts on
the web. He was looking for some information, and he was asking for
help.
Tyrone stared at the phone. What seemed like a thousand years ago, he
had helped Jay chase down a bad guy in VR. He and Jay knew each other
from way back, ever since Tyrone's dad had been at Net Force. Of
course, that time he'd helped Jay had been when he was spending six or
seven hours a day jacked in to his computer, something he hadn't done
in a while. These days, he was on-line two hours a day, tops, almost
nothing, just enough time to read his mail, run through a few VR rooms,
and maybe a few minutes of an on-line game. But if Jay was asking,
Tyrone bet it had something to do with his dad getting shot, and he was
ready to sit down, plug in, and get the data flowin' fine and fast for
that. This was the guy who had pack-pronged Portland, killed people,
and ruined the championships, too. A drag foot juice sucker who needed
to be shorted out, no feek. He had his laptop with him, in his pack in
his dad's room. He'd get it and get online.
Nadine could help him. She didn't know a whole lot about computers,
but he could take her along and show her as they went. He was not as
sharp as he'd been, but he could still lube foot the net okay. He'd
help Jay and they would catch the sucker who had shot his dad.
Tuesday, June 14th Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Inside the car, even with the motor running and the air conditioner
going on high, it was warm. It was just the two of them, Morrison in
the back, Ventura driving. They passed the odd militiaman on the dusty
gravel road as they crept along at just over walking speed.
Over the phone, Wu's voice was silky, relaxed, lulling.
He said, 'Of course we trust you. It's just that some of your... ah
... associates seem to have a bias against people of our ...
persuasion. No point in tempting fate, now, is there?'
Morrison nodded at the unseen speaker. Both phones had their picture
transmission off, so neither man could view the other. Not that it
would have helped Morrison much to see Wu. He wasn't particularly good
at reading expressions on Western faces; as far as he was concerned,
the Chinese were inscrutable. Besides, it didn't matter.
Ventura had coached him, and so far, everything the bodyguard had said
was right on the button. In theory, their conversation was scrambled,
encoded so that it couldn't be understood even if somebody was able to
